Vanity
by Decollage
Summary: Grandpa George finds it a funny vice for a man outside of time.


"It's just so... foppish. Vain. I won't say womanly, because I have a wife and a daughter and they look like plain folks." He exhaled a blue cloud of smoke, glowering at the distant horizon over the considerable hedge and fence affair that enclosed the massive back lot. "Not that I ever said they aren't pretty, in their way. But it's a very... usual pretty."

The chocolatier, likewise regarding the distant orange light-pollution glow off where the sky ended, did not shy or flinch, not outwardly. Willy had known men like this, like his father, and knew that wavering would be much like presenting his throat to a wizened lion. He could keep it in. He was out of practice, but he could keep it in. George didn't ever truly mean malice, and the bit of him that was an adult and a professional, the bit that wasn't neurotic or traumatized, understood this and so he did not flinch.

They sat on a pile of heavy cardboard boxes, waiting for loading; after his initial twitching discomfort with the tobacco smoke and the false diesel smog (false because the trucks did not run on diesel, or petrol at all, but the processed derivatives of fructose-rich sweet plants), he seemed at least superficially at ease. They'd both be dusty and dirty and smelling of smoke when they went in- and George would protest the sterile blast of hot air that would pummel them upon reaching the second-back-door, but he always did, though it wasn't as though his flannel and courderoy would suffer any disarray. Wonka's plum velvet and neat page-boy cut, though, might. He knew it would be better than some of what he worked with every day, but somehow even the most inconsequential things, out here, seemed dire.

"Well, I can't go about looking like Robinson Crusoe, even if I haven't been out in... Since before Charlie was born." He choked back the nervous, fluttering giggle. That would prove him a fop, though on some level he knew that he was and that his very appearance aired the fact. There is a lot of vanity in isolation. He also knew that it as a source of contempt, and not to push it.

George snorted, biting the end of his cigar. It was mid-range expensive; Willy knew because of how the papers were rolled. For a while, there, when he was fourteen and newly-out, he'd sold newspapers and sundries on the Liverpool train. He wondered, then, when the old man had gone out. "But you do look like you haven't been around. Since the last queen, anyway, and early on in her reign at that. What I can't get my mind around is why you give a damn," he gestured expansively with the cigar. "You've been all locked up here for ages now, nobody in, nobody out, that's what they've always said. And the Loompas- well. They wear leaves. I don't imagine they're going to judge."

Willy opened his mouth to clarify that the 'leaves' were of great ceremonial significance, and that their daily leisure wear was a laboriously woven and pressed fiber called _othclay_, but somehow the point didn't make it out. "You're right." He settled on finally, secretly pleased that this most disagreeable of the Buckets was at least polite enough not to call him a poof. He'd half expected it, even now, months after George had consented to peacefully coexist. "I don't suppose anyone would care. Not until I came back, anyway."

George looked at him then, bushy brows furrowed, but Willy continued. "I don't think I intended to stay away forever. But people..." He groped for the words, annoyed that for all his fluency in exotic languages and imaginary dialects he could not impart this one point to this one old man. "They're scared of the idea of being alone for a long time," he settled on finally. "Really scared. And if I got used to not caring, I really would look like a castaway. And they would be frightened."

And also, something small in him said, if you didn't care, nobody would, and that- that's scarier than anything. The bit of obsessive compulsion in him flinched at the idea, even as he knew it to be true. He would be in disarray, if not for the carefully constructed vanity about him.

George grumbled something to himself. "I suppose. Can't very well invite children to take a tour of the mysterious factory if you look like Ian Brady."

Puzzled (he'd known the name. Somewhere. Once.), Willy shrugged. "I suppose not."

"But see here-" The chocolatier looked to where he gestured- but it seemed only thin air and smoke. "I don't think"- Oh, so it was only what he was saying, not an actual- "you ought to have Charlie dress up." Oh.

"That's... Well, it's entirely his mother's business, isn't it? Besides. He hasn't anything to prove." That's what it was, then. Proving. And Charlie could keep his earnest sweaters and lovingly worn shoes, because people did care, and he could laugh in the face of anyone who said otherwise. Though, Charlie wouldn't.

George nodded decisively, once, and put out the godawful cigar. "That's alright, then."

For a long, contented moment, Willy watched the rising dusk and felt that it was.

* * *

AN: This is my attempt to reconcile the 1970s Wonka (who I prefer) with the stylized 2005 version.


End file.
